Page 51 of Ruthless Grace

I don’t pull my hand away. I tangle my cold fingers in his wet dark hair, holding him against my cheek as Dr. Vance turns back to the monitor to explain the shadow on the screen.

20

LUCA

The days since the brownstone have been a slow-burning hell.

For three days, the Valentino estate has existed in a state of suffocating, atmospheric lockdown. We haven’t spoken about what happened in Suite 102. We haven’t mentioned the grayscale ultrasound screen, the small dark shadow anchored deep in her chest, or the way the ground went out from under me when I realized the enemy she was fighting wasn’t a rival Don.

We moved through the halls like two ghosts occupying the same dark house. Gia went to her OR shifts at the hospital, her jaw set like iron, her surgeon’s hands performing emergency vascular repairs while carrying her own body’s secret. I sat at my port desk, auditing dock manifests and tracking Russo’s movement, my mind anchored entirely across the river.

The only words we exchanged about Dr. Vance’s clinic were spoken once, in the rain-drenched back seat of my car, twenty seconds after we left the Garden District brownstone.

She had sat pressed against the leather door, her hands folded tight over her knees, staring out at the gray downpour blurring Prytania Street. Her voice had dropped into a low, razor-sharp whisper, the tone of a Donna issuing an order to a soldier.

“Do not tell my family, Luca. Don’t tell Dante. Don’t tell Nico. Don’t tell my brothers.”

I had looked at her from across the leather bench, my throat tight. “Gia⁠—”

“No,” she had snapped, turning her dark eyes on mine, flashing with a fierce, unyielding pride that refused to be pity-bound. “If my brothers find out I am sitting in an oncology clinic before we have a pathology report, Dante will go nuclear, Nico will burn down the city looking for specialists, and they will treat me like I’m already dying. I refuse to be handled like fragile glass by my own blood. Give me your word, Valentino, that this stays between us until we have proper details.”

I gave her my word.

And for three days, I carried that oath like a lead weight in my chest. I said nothing to Dante when he called about shipping logistics. I said nothing to Nico when he questioned my security detail at the docks. I let my own men think the extra guards around Gia were standard territory precautions against Russo. I swallowed the secret, letting it corrode my ribs, while the clock ticked down to this afternoon.

Now, the car cuts through the heavy New Orleans humidity, pulling into the narrow cobblestone alley behind the historic brownstone for the second time. Rain still drums against the roof, a relentless, somber rhythm that mirrors the hammering in my chest.

Beside me, Gia sits in a dark plum silk blouse and tailored trousers. She hasn’t touched her phone. She hasn’t looked at me once since we crossed the river. She simply stares at the brass latch of the rear gate, her right hand rolling through that tight little ritual against her thigh. A surgeon preparing herself to step into her own operating room, not as the healer, but as the tissue on the table.

I shift in my seat, my suit jacket feeling tight across my shoulders. “We’re here, Giada.”

“I have eyes, Valentino,” she says, her voice flat, steady, and entirely devoid of fear.

She reaches for the door handle, but I reach out first, my hand catching her wrist. Her skin is icy cold under my palm.

“We walk in together,” I say. “And we walk out together. Understand me?”

She looks at my hand on her wrist, her jaw tightening, before raising her dark eyes to mine. She doesn’t fight the grip. She gives me a single, stiff nod, and together, we step out into the rain.

Suite 102 is dead silent when we enter.

The broken mahogany door from three days ago has been repaired, a fresh brass lock fitted into the jamb. The smell of expensive beeswax and crushed orchids is completely gone, replaced by the sharp, medicinal tang of isopropyl alcohol, brown iodine, and sterile drape linen.

Dr. Arthur Vance stands beside a stainless-steel procedure cart in the rear exam nook. He has stripped off his tailored suit jacket, wearing a crisp surgical gown and a pair of sterile latex gloves. Arranged on the blue sterile towel before him: small glass vials, a syringe with a long three-inch needle, scalpels, bandages, and a heavy mechanical device of polished steel and black plastic, built with a spring in it.

Gia steps behind the privacy drape without hesitation. She doesn’t stall. She doesn’t ask for a minute. With the terrifying, mechanical efficiency of a doctor who knows the routine, she unbuttons her plum silk blouse, folds it over the back of the velvet chair, and drapes the pale blue paper gown across her chest.

She sits back on the examination table, her spine rigid against the paper sheet, her left breast exposed and painted with a wide swath of dark brown antiseptic.

I step past the privacy curtain, my wet leather boots heavy on the floorboards, and take my place directly beside the head of her table.

Dr. Vance turns from his tray, his wire-rimmed glasses catching the harsh overhead clinical lighting. He looks at me, then at my broad shoulders blocking the narrow aisle between the cart and the wall.

“Don Valentino,” Dr. Vance says, his voice dry and authoritative. “The core biopsy requires an absolute sterile field. Local anesthesia and tissue harvesting are delicate procedures. I must ask you to wait in the front sitting room while I harvest the cores.”

I don’t step back. I don’t look at the door.

I take one step closer to the table, my frame casting a dark shadow over the procedure cart. I lower my head until my eyes are level with the oncologist’s.